Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Tuesday May 03, 2011 @03:14PM
from the now-that's-useful dept.

sproketboy noted that many years ago
Michael J. Mahon built the AppleCrate — a parallel stack of Apple IIs — for no good reason. Recently he came back with the AppleCrate II, which more than doubles the number of motherboards, and at least triples the awesomeness.

More correctly, the 6502 was designed by Chuck Peddle and Bill Mensch. Both engineers were working for Motorola, but the 6502 was an underground project. Management didn't approve of their efforts to create a cheaper version of the 6800. They left, and started working for MOS to finish the design.

If you look at this actual website, it becomes more obvious WHY he's using Apple II boards.

#1) He's using discrete components and actual wire and solder to cobble the boards into a single computer. He uses perf-board and socketed chips to build his extra peripherals. YOU CANNOT DO THAT with modern Intel-based mobos. They are all surface mount and pretty much unhackable unless you've got some elYte equipment.

#2) The Apple II board was built by a hacker, for hackers. That makes it the obvious choice in a nutshell. This is exactly the kind of stuff Woz wanted people to do with his creation.

#3) There's no challenge to doing parallel computing with an intel mobo -- they are already coming off the shelf with 8 cores. What's the fun in that?